Gramado to award the Kikito tonight, for the first time two crystal trophies

The 54th Festival de Cinema de Gramado, the leading showcase of Brazilian audiovisual production, closes today. The award ceremony for the Kikito for Brazilian feature films and documentaries is set for Saturday, August 22, with a red carpet at 19:00 and the awards at 20:00 at the Palácio dos Festivais. The event began on August 12 and took place between the Palácio and the Rua Coberta, on Avenida Borges de Medeiros: this is reported by the official program and confirmed by C7nema’s reconstruction based on organizers’ materials.

One trophy, two recipients

The institutional novelty of this edition concerns the Kikito de Cristal, the honor created in 2007: for the first time it is being awarded to two artists simultaneously, Maria Fernanda Cândido and Selton Mello, as announced by the organization according to Papo de Cinema. The other honors go to Marcos Caruso (Troféu Cidade de Gramado), Andrea Beltrão (Troféu Oscarito) and Renata Almeida Magalhães (Troféu Eduardo Abelin).

The juries were announced in advance. The fiction feature film jury is composed of Cris Vianna, Helena Ranaldi, Fabio Meira, Kênia Freitas and Marcelo Serrado; the documentary competition includes, among others, Bárbara Paz and Caco Ciocler; the Brazilian short film jury includes Gabriela Loran, Ícaro Silva and Marcos Veras.

The opening with Globo

The official opening was held on Friday, August 14, with a red carpet at 17:00 and an out-of-competition screening of “Antártida,” directed by Bruno Safadi and produced by the Núcleo de Filmes of Estúdios Globo, with Lázaro Ramos, Leandra Leal and Marina Ruy Barbosa. It is a detail that says something about the festival’s structure: the opening night entrusted, out of competition, to a production of the country’s main television group, while the competition remains the domain of independent and regional productions.

This latter point is confirmed by the previous year’s list of winners. In 2025 the main Kikito had gone to “Cinco Tipos de Medo” by Bruno Bini, a production from Mato Grosso, which received four awards, as noted by Gramado Magazine: a film coming from a state far from the production hubs of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Why it matters

Gramado has existed since 1973 and has distributed over a thousand Kikito. Alongside the competition, it hosts the Gramado Film Market, the commercial side of the event: it is at once an awards ceremony and the place where distribution deals for Brazilian cinema are built. In a year in which the major European festivals — Venice foremost among them — present selections lacking titles from major studios and platforms, the market function of national festivals is regaining weight.

The material available does not contain the list of films competing for the main Kikito nor the number of works entered in the various sections: the outcome of the evening will therefore be the first complete data on the 2026 competition. The sources agree on the date, times and honors already awarded; regarding the winners of the feature film category, there is, at the time of this article’s publication, no official result.